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The Terrors of the Earth
Written by Dylan Scott for Advanced Camp 2011. Teaser The sun was high and the earth was flat. A single vulture circled high in the clear blue sky. A straight track of bootprints was laid out on the desert behind a man, wearing a wide-brimmed hat to hide his eyes from the sun. He had two holsters slung low on his hips, and each held a thick, knobbly wand with a well-worn grip. The spellslinger kneeled and took up a handful of the hard, crusty dirt. He brought it to his nose and breathed in its smell. It told him something. It told him to travel back East, where there was hot coffee and fresh tobacco and you didn’t have to sleep under the stars. There was a lot of things, back East. A powwow of people like him, meeting in a cool, dark forest, speaking of things that mattered dearly to him and everyone else. To the forest, thick and wild… The image came unbidden to his mind. He had learned to trust such things, out in the Wastes, where one can go weeks without seeing another soul. He stood back up and looked off into the distance. He could just see, far away, black smoke rising in puffs, and he could just hear the chunking thud of a steam engine, heading East. ---- The arm of his jacket made a barely audible swish sound as he gestured to his team with military style hand signals. This was essentially a formality; they all knew what they were doing, and he had briefed them before. That’s what a leader is – prepared. The alley was wet and cold and dark. The rainstorm had ended, which had taken away one of his methods of aural camouflage, so he had given a drunk some coin to holler at the mouth of the alley, loud enough that the targets wouldn’t hear his team moving into place. His team was in place ahead of schedule, in the shadows of the alley. The targets were there now, four in total. His intel had been good. They were right on time. “Why won’t that jerk just shut UP, amirite?” one of the targets said. He looked around at his companions with a stupid, desperate smile on his face. None of them returned it. “Keep quiet, Jobe. We’re done with the job, let’s just get out of here.” The older target with a face carved out of granite looked around, but he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Let him get a bit further, and… The leader signaled. “Hey, mac, you got a light?” a handsome man in a nice suit said, approaching the targets from the mouth of the alley. “Where’s your smoke? If you need a light, you got a smoke.” The older target was sharp. Just like in the plan. “Listen, I’ll get my smoke out if you got a light, friend, but if you don’t…” Jobe was at the back of the group, of course. I always get stuck with the back, he thought, it’s bullshit, it’s all bullshit, I don’t care about any of this, I don’t need these thugs, I’m a smart guy, I can make it out, and then I’ll have all the money and the girls and the fancy carriages I want, and I’ll- -he looked down in pain and surprise at the knife blade emerging from his chest. He let out a gurgle as he died. Everything going according to plan. The other three targets turned to look and see what had happened to Jobe, just like in the plan, and the man in the fancy suit pulled a knife out of a shoulder holster and threw it into the neck of one of the targets. He died, or was taken out of the fight – same thing, more or less. The two other targets tried to pull swords, but only one succeeded. The older target, the one with the granite face, reacted almost instantly to the knife throw, if not to the death of Jobe. Granite-face swung at the knife-thrower’s head, but the knife-thrower was too quick, and ducked it. There was some red, which WASN’T according to plan, but the leader would worry about that later. Signal. The last two members of his team came out of nowhere and attacked, coordinated and clean. The targets had swords and his team had knives, but a sheathed sword was about as useful as a lighter with nothing to smoke. One of his team easily took out the surprised target who hadn’t managed to draw sword. The other was assigned to the granite-faced target, but it seemed like Ol’ Stoneface knew when he was beaten, because he turned tail and ran. “Go, go, go! Find him, hunt him down!” No reason to signal anymore. The last two members of his team, only one with blood on his knife, ran off after Stoneface. Nothing doing there, of course. That old man knows all the places to hide in this city, and he knows who you have to pay off to use them. The leader stepped out of the shadows to survey the wreckage. His long coat caught in the breeze as he lit up a smoke. The man in the fancy suit was lying on the ground in a pool of blood, shuddering. “He cut off my ear! He cut it off! Goddamnit, he cut off my ear!” Something else to worry about later. The leader walked over to the one target still alive. The knife to the neck hadn’t killed him, apparently, as he was still gurgling blood and spouting the nonsense people spouted as they died. The leader kneeled down and lifted up the dying man’s head. “To the forest, thick and wild…” the dying man said. The leader was shocked to hear these words coming from the targets bloody red lips. They were words he had dreamed, or thought he had dreamed. A calling, to the forest, to meet, to meet, to the forest thick and wild, to the forest, my only child… He knew when he had to be there, and why. He yanked the knife out of the targets neck. The blood flowed, and he died with a sigh. ---- The young woman approached the stone door warily, a hand holding a wand out in front of her. She had her left hand on the short sword in a sheath on her hip. She was looking at the door like she expected it to bite her or explode. Not totally out of the question, she thought to herself. She reached out her wand to push the door open but stopped just before it made contact with wood. She switched the wand to her left hand and the sword to her right and used the slightly longer item to push the door open. Gotta think tactically. A golden glow illuminated her face and her eyes opened wide. It was right there, after this whole time. This entire dungeon, filled to the brim with insane traps, brimming with horrible monsters, it was all worth it. She was about to attain the greatest prize any hero could ever achieve. The Egg. Solid gold, the size of two fists stacked on top of each other, on a stone pillar on the other side of the room. The other… side of… the room… Damnit. Damn it all. She spent several minutes staring at the wooden floor. She took samples and tested them for alchemical agents and magical influences. She inspected the grain of the wood, seeing if it differed in any way from a natural grain, trying to divine any meaning she could from it. She smelled it. It smelled like wood. It did not seem to have any unusual properties. Just the normal properties of wood. She stepped onto it and held her breath. Nothing. Oh, thank the gods, she thought as she walked across the wooden floor to the golden Egg. She reached out and grabbed it. It crumbled to dust in her hands. “Hey, what the-“ she said. Circular openings in the walls opened up and started shooting flame onto the wooden floor as the wooden door slammed shut. One of the normal properties of wood is flammability... She scrambled onto the pillar that used to hold a fake replica of the Egg. She spotted something. When the wooden door closed, it revealed a section of wall she hadn’t been able to see before. On it was a lever with a helpful diagram above it. The first picture was a generic flame, and the second was the lever being pulled down. Simple enough. Somehow there was a path through the flames to the lever. She jumped over several flame jets, made it to the lever, and pulled it triumphantly. Bigger circles irised open in the walls and started flooding the room with water. Oh, you have got to be kidding me. The room very rapidly filled with water until there was only a small amount of air, which was at the top. Which was filled with smoke. I could die here. I could die right now. Fuck that. She kicked off against the roof and swam down to the wooden door. She was losing strength from lack of breath, so she didn’t even try to kick it out. She pointed her wand of fireball at it and turned it to the highest setting: “Fricassee”. She closed her eyes, looked away, and as the last few air bubbles left her mouth, she activated it. The door blew outward in an explosion of water and smoke. The force of her wand slammed her against the opposite wall and then the flood of water slammed her against the wall opposite the door. Some things that were very important in her body snapped. She lay there dying on the floor, soaking wet. Her vision was going. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a shadowy figure approach her. She looked down and saw bones sticking out of her body, and this made her laugh. She saw the life leaking out in a red torrent, and her breath leaving her like smoke. She tried to look up at the shadowy figure and hoped he would be her friend. It would be nice to have a friend to hear my last words, she thought. Her voice was thick and heavy. “To the forest, thick and wild, to the forest, my only child… And if my child goes dancing in-“ “She’ll never come dancing out again,” the stranger said. “I know, young one. I know.” The stranger killed her quick and clean in that dark place under the earth. That was something to be grateful for, anyway. THE TERRORS OF THE EARTH: A fairytale by Dylan Scott Flow What Really Happened Cast Category:Games